YEAR END NEWSLETTER

The following newsletter is being sent home on Monday:

June 2017	Year End Newsletter

 

Dates to Remember

June 27             Transition Day at Stevenson:

                          K – 4 students will visit their classrooms for next year.

June 28             SJCI Grad

June 29            Report Cards Distributed at end of school day

                        Celebration of Learning

                        10:00 a.m. Gym

June 30             Inservice – No School

2017-2018 School Year:

Opening Day Conferences –

Wednesday, Sept. 6 & Thursday, Sept. 7, 2017

First Full Day of Classes -

Friday, Sept. 8, 2017

Winter Break – Dec. 25/17-Jan. 5/18

Spring Break – Mar. 26-Mar. 30/18

Last Day of Classes – Thursday, June 28, 2018

            * * * * * * *

Dear Parents:

Once again, we find ourselves at the end of a school year – an exciting and successful one.  It has been a busy year for students and staff, and we commend them on their many accomplishments.

We thank you for your continued support and assistance in being willing members to foster great home-school partnerships.  As long as students, teachers and parents are working together, Stevenson School will continue to be a great place for growing and learning.

As this school year draws to a close, we look forward to the changes that will take place in the new school year. Each year brings some changes in personnel, as some staff leave, and others transfer to opportunities at other schools.

Please join us in saying goodbye to Christine Janzen, Ashley Engstrom, Lanette Griffith, Terry Charette, Jessica Best, Catherine Ellis and Trevor Hollins, who were on term positions at the school; and to Gregg Loadman, who is moving to another school.

As the school year ends, we can’t help but think about the upcoming summer vacation. Our wish for you: To those who are leaving us, “May you find happiness and success in your new school community.” To our entire community, “May you have a fun and sun -filled summer vacation.” 

J. Couch                                    S. Amaral

Principal                                    Vice-Principal

CHANGES FOR NEXT YEAR:

Each year, we have a few changes in our staff. We have to say goodbye to some and welcome others to our school.

We wish Mrs. Johannson well in the next year, on her extended maternity leave.

We thank Mrs. Ellis and Mr. Hollins for your time as Educational Assistants at our school this year. They were on term positions. We hope to work with them in the future.

We thank Mr. Loadman for his year here as our evening Cleaner. He is moving to another school for next year.

We thank Ms. Janzen, our Librarian for a year. We wish you the best at your new school next year.

We thank Miss Griffith, Miss Engstrom, Mr. Charette, and Miss Best for their time with us this year. We wish you the best at your new schools next year. We hope to work with you again in the future.

We welcome back Mrs. Wood and Ms. Beazley from their maternity leaves, as well as Mrs. Mackling from her leave of absence.

We welcome aboard Ms. Neufeld, as one of our Grade 3/4/5 Teachers; Mr. Bisesi, as our Grade 3/4/5 French Teacher; and Ms. Rothwell, as one of our Educational Assistants for next year.

Please find listed below the classrooms for the 2017-18 school year.

Kindergarten Rm 7 -            Mrs. Grant

Kindergarten Rm 8 -            Miss Griffiths

Grade 1/2 Rm 9  -              Mrs. Lowe

Grade 1/2 Rm 12  -            Mrs. Buchanan

Grade 1/2 Rm 14 -             Mrs. Hamm

Grade 1/2 Rm 16  -            Mrs. Hardy

Grade 3/4/5 Rm 11  -         Miss Long

Grade 3/4/5 Rm 17 -          Ms. Neufeld

Grade 3/4/5 Rm 18 -          Mrs. Hauta

Grade 3/4/5 Rm 3  -           Ms. Beazley

Grade 3/4/5 Rm 4  -           Mr. Trembath

Grade 3/4/5 Rm 5  -           Mrs. Kaczmarz

Principal -                            Ms. Couch

Vice Principal/Res./Guid. -   Ms. Amaral

Guidance/Res./Guid. -        Mrs. Smith

Reading Rec/Res./Guid. -    Ms. Heerah

French (Gr. 3/4/5) -              Mr. Bisesi

French (Gr. 1/2), Phys. Ed. - Mrs. Havixbeck

Music -                                 Ms. Rempel

Phys. Ed. -                            Mr. McKinnon

Librarian  -                           Mrs. Wood

Secretary -                          Mrs. Angell

Caretaker -                          Mr. Johnston

REFLECTIONS ON OUR YEAR

We have had a year of really great and exciting moments, as well as some very sad, traumatic events in the lives of our families and of our staff. We are very fortunate to have such a caring community to rely upon for support.

We are a very busy school community. Our staff believe in researching the most current teaching practices in order to provide our students with the best start to their formal education. We continue to infuse literacy and numeracy across all other subject areas and provide real life scenarios for students to experience purposeful reading and writing, and to deepen their problem solving skills. Literacy and numeracy are at the core of everything we do. As well, we have overhauled our classrooms to become calmer learning environments.

RECONCILIATION

At Stevenson, we wish to be a part of the solution toward reconciliation in our great country. We believe in learning more about Indigenous cultures, as well as about all of our families’ cultures and creating the conditions for learning about each other.

Stevenson School would like to acknowledge that we are on Treaty One land, the traditional territory of the Cree, Anishinaabe and Dakota peoples and the homeland of the Metis nation.

UDL

We are a hub school in our school division for Universal Design for Learning. The main philosophy of UDL is academic and social inclusion of all our learners. We work hard at designing lessons to meet the needs of all our learners. Other schools in our division will be learning from our school.

CIRCUS ARTS

We have a strong physical education program with many opportunities for students to be active throughout their day at school. This year, Mr. McKinnon implemented Circus Arts Instruction into the Physical Education Program, as well as provided extra-curricular time at recess and after school for Gr. 4 and 5 students. We would like to acknowledge the extra time and effort Mr. McKinnon put into all of the practical as well as theoretical studies this past year with the National Circus School. We will continue to implement the Circus Arts next year in various degrees. We are part of a national research study at the Grade 5 level for 2 reasons: To improve the physical literacy skills of our students; To improve the confidence levels of girls in their abilities in physical literacy. We are waiting to see the results from this past year. We will share our data as we learn more.

This year, for our 12^th annual Celebration of the Arts, we showcased our “Cirque du Stevenson”! We had a lot of fun preparing for this event! It was also a lot of hard work and extra time for students and staff to put together a show like this. Each student was able to show skills they had worked at all year. In particular, we must thank Mr. McKinnon for teaching our students all the skills they have now and for encouraging them to try physical activities they haven’t tried before. Thanks to Ms. Rempel for coordinating the show and working with students on their presentations. Thanks also to Miss Long, Miss Griffiths, and Mrs. Lowe for working with students on their routines for the show and for the pre-show buskers. Thanks to Mrs. Kaczmarz and Mrs. Hardy for preparing dance performances with our students. Thank you to Ms. Amaral for working with our Ring Masters.

We presented our “Cirque du Stevenson” to our School Board at a Trustee Meeting. They were very impressed with the physical abilities of our students, as well as how well spoken they were at the presentation!

WJHA

We believe that students need exposure to many kinds of activities in order to help them begin to establish what they believe in and who they want to become. This year, we have continued to be a part of the Winnipeg Jets Hockey Academy program. We are very thankful to the True North Foundation for providing hockey for some of our students. We have a WJHA committee that meets each year to decide who will enter into the program for Grade 2. For those students not involved in the WJHA, we have Project Thursdays, where we dive into inquiry and play based learning. If you wish to have more information, please contact the school.

THE ARTS

We continue to have strong arts programs with several performance opportunities: “Tapping Our Potential” dance group, choirs and various instrumental groups, and our annual winter concert and spring Celebration of the Arts. There is a lot of preparation and extra work that goes into working with our students to create strong performances. We acknowledge Ms. Rempel, Mrs. Kaczmarz, for their dedication and time given for the sake of the arts in our community.

STUDENT LEADERSHIP

We have challenged our students to learn more about leadership and responsibilities. We have students running recess activities, doing announcements, running our assemblies, being buddies with our youngest students, fundraising for local and global causes, and participating in kindness challenges and physical literacy challenges.

RESTITUTION

This year, we continued teaching our students that it is okay to make mistakes. In fact, we can learn the most from our mistakes. We wish to empower students to recognize when they have made mistakes and figure out how to fix things independently. As adults, we want to protect our children. We need to step back and let our children make mistakes on their own so that they can learn to problem solve and make good choices for themselves.

We also held several parent information evenings on Restitution for a second year. We wish to continue to invite you to learn with us. Watch for the invitations next year.

OUTDOOR SCHOOL

We are now in our fourth year of being involved in the Outdoor Challenge. We would like to acknowledge our partners in education, Discovery Children’s Centre for leading us in the research and sharing their marvelous Adventure Playground with us. We thank Mrs. Lowe for starting us on our outdoor journey. We are participating in taking learning outdoors for the sake of being in nature, for teaching the value of playing, as well as to teach our curriculum. It is our intent to be in nature in every season. We will continue to research and expand this program in the coming years.

OUR TIPI

Because of our commitment to learning more about Indigenous culture, we continue to use our tipi as an outdoor classroom, and to further our learning in Indigenous Education. We really enjoy being in it! We ask our whole community to help us to take good care of it in order to have it for many years to come.

NATURE PLAYGROUND

We were very excited that we were able to move forward with our plans for improving our playground last fall! We wish to provide a more natural space for everyone to play in. After a few years of putting together grant applications, along with our Parent Council, we were finally successful this year in being granted funds through The City of Winnipeg, Community Places, and Toyota Evergreen Learning Grounds. 

We also began a gardening project this year. A special thanks goes to Mrs. Lowe, Mrs. Buchanan, and your students for being our garden champions! You and your students put in a lot of hard work for our school with planning, building, hauling, planting, and tending to our new garden boxes, as well as our garden beds around our school. They look so great and it feels so good to get started on gardening with kids! Thank you for helping to make our garden dreams come true. We will continue to expand our garden next year. Thanks to Parent Council for funding the landscaping of the garden area. Thanks to Windsor Plywood for donating wood and screws. Thanks to Reimer Soils for donating soil and sand. Thanks to Mr. Jeff Rogers, Woods Teacher at SJCI, for designing our garden boxes and cutting the wood for us.

We will call together a Playground Committee meeting next fall to plan for more developments.

CLASSROOMS

For the 2017-2018 school year, we will continue to have 12 classrooms. Our configuration for our classrooms going forward is: 2 Kindergarten classes, 4 Gr. 1/2 classes, and 6 Gr. 3/4/5 classes. We sent a note home about this in May and held a public meeting to explain the benefits of these configurations. We want to provide your children with the best contact time with their teachers as possible. If you have any questions, please feel free to call the school.

CELEBRATION OF LEARNING

“Everyone Welcome”

Our End of Year Celebration for all grades will take place on Thursday, June 29, 2017 at 10:00am in the gym. Memorial Awards and School Board awards will be distributed at this time.  All parents are welcome to attend.

LOST & FOUND

We have accumulated a large number of items in our Lost and Found. Please take a few minutes to look through these items and take whatever belongs to your child. Clothing that has not been picked up by the end of June will be donated to a local charity.

REPORT CARDS

Student report cards will be issued at the end of classes on Thursday, June 29^th. Please understand that we cannot make exceptions to this.

If you are leaving on an early vacation and your child will not be present on Thursday, June 29th, please leave a stamped, self-addressed envelope (8.5 x 11 envelope with two stamps) with Mrs. Angell in the school office prior to this date and your child’s report card will be mailed to you.

MOVING???

Please advise the school if your family is moving away from the Stevenson-Britannia area this summer.  This greatly helps with our planning for September.

LUNCH SUPERVISORS

We are in need of more lunch supervisors for next school year. These are paid positions. Please call the school if you are interested.

COMMUNICATION

We appreciate having in-person conversations with parents, as well as phone calls and emails in order to keep in good communication with you. Next year, we will continue to have school and classroom blogs, Twitter and Instagram feeds, as well as the Remind app for texting you up-coming events. We will only send home a newsletter at the beginning and end of the year. Otherwise, all of our information and events can be found on our blog. You will also find a calendar of events on our school blog. We will also send home a paper copy of up-coming important dates at the start of the school year.

Also, the school division is in the process of building new websites to keep you informed. More information will come out in the fall. The new school division website address is:

http://www.sjasd.ca

Blog:                stevensonelem.blogspot.ca

Twitter:             @stevensonelem

Instagram:        @stevensonelem